“Wowza,” said Dave.
AJ followed her castmates down a narrow passage, past a green holding cell, up a spiral staircase into a large golden corridor. All around them, the papery walls emitted a pulsing glow.
“We ran ten thousand Christmas lights through the set to get this effect,” said Ian. “They can do all sorts of things—flash, change color. That’s how the crale will interact with the crew.”
“Look,” Toni breathed, pointing to a small blemish in the fibrous wall—a camera.
“We’ve got overthree hundredof these hidden around,” said Ian.
The cameras never turned off, he explained. Each one was synced to a central clock; these, along with their body mics, would allow the cast to move seamlessly between environments.
“This is a panopticon,” muttered AJ.
“Damn straight,” said Ian. “If you so much as sneeze, we’ll get it from four angles.”
The set was a steampunk labyrinth—wooden ladders traversing corrugated steel, equal parts nautical and new age. By the looks of it, this show was going to beAstronauticals’gritty cousin.
Em was waiting for them in the warm ocher galley.
“Look around you,” he said. Everyone obeyed. “For the next few weeks, and maybe years to come, these are your crewmates and your family.”
He pointed at his own chest. “I am your crewmate and your family. What we’re doing here is new. It’s different. Some people won’t get it. I’m not even sureIget it. But that excites me as much as it terrifies me. Because that’s how legends are made.”
“Wowza,” whispered Dave.
Em looked around the room at each of them, passing over AJ without a glimmer of recognition.
“Am I missing anything?” he asked Ian.
Ian shook his head.
“Okay,” said Em. “Let’s make a show.”
On the third dayof preproduction, Em gathered the full cast in his “Time Pagoda,” a full-scale replica of the three-story octagonal Anraku-ji temple in Ueda, Japan, which Em had reconstructed on the north side of his property for “retreats of the mind.”
Today, the cast were using it for a show bible Q and A. Everyone was there, including the actors AJ hadn’t met yet—Leah Lopez, who played the doctor, Andy Mulligan, aka the killer brute, and Elmore Aldrich, the grandfather to AJ’s character. Even Anjalee had called in. Now and again, one of the interns would interrupt with a question the pop star had put in via text.
Noah had also broken his isolation to attend. As Em fielded a series of increasingly detailed questions, AJ tried not to stare at him across the round cherrywood table.
“There are no aliens,” Em was saying, “but we’re taking the concept of weaving from the original and making it into a foundational part of the world. Withactualspecial effects. No more streamers.”
“Sorry,” said Toni. “Can we back up for those of us who aren’t Nauticals? What’s weaving?”
Em stiffened.
Ian jumped in. “Weavers are mutants, basically—they’re humans who have evolved to manipulate base elements: earth, water, fire, air. Water weavers control the galaxy with their Navy. Fire weavers, like Rho and Bill, are outlaws. Actually, you areallNaval outlaws.”
“So, water weavers: bad,” said Dave.
Toni pursed her lips. “Isn’t Alara a water weaver?”
“Yes,” said Ian. “But she’s from far in the future. She’s actually the last surviving water weaver.”
“Which is why I’m hunting her,” said Noah.
AJ fidgeted. Her body could not metabolize that she was six feet from Noah Drew. Yet there he was, his large hand resting on a dog-eared bible printout.
Even from this distance, his dark, familiar scent lapped at AJ’s consciousness like a subwoofer. And it was making her strange. That scent conjured good things, like safety, and home, and love…
